


Tangy Aftertaste

by renaissancepalette



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Awkward Crush, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Crushes, F/F, Female Relationships, Femslash, Fluff, I have never heard of this pairing before, Jewish Wanda Maximoff, Lesbian Natasha Romanov, Romance, Romani Wanda Maximoff, Scarlet Widow, ScarletWidow, Wanda Maximoff & Natasha Romanov Friendship, am i going to forgive or forget that wanda is a mutant? never ever, brief mentions of vision, but i saw it exists and thought it would be fun to try something new, kind of but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 20:58:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17029911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissancepalette/pseuds/renaissancepalette
Summary: Wanda has a hard crush along with the typical jitters over her mentor, Natasha.





	Tangy Aftertaste

A plume of smoke; a dash of vice. A splash of scarlet red blood across dark leather. A scream, a vicious cry, and a pair of clawing nails, one painted black and the other slate grey.

That is how they met: through spite and fury and pure female fire—the only a fire can grow by the combination of another.

* * *

Wanda is aware—grudgingly, disgruntley—that she isn’t a _people person_. She doesn’t initiate conversation or interaction, and she actively avoids having to speak if she can help it—speaking in front of people and crowds and on video. Jokingly, there tried to be footage taken of her and she would hide her face behind her hands. (She’s always hiding, always distancing, shielding herself because she’s apprehensive.) She avoids it, doesn’t meet eye contact—looks to her shoes, the curtains, into the fucking sun rather than having to deal with the crushing anxiety and expectation of carrying the overbearing weight of upholding a conversation or a speech. She doesn’t date, and she shys away from it all—from parties, from debates, from ice-breakers—and finds solace in books and music and physical handwork instead; and she’d rather chooses to stand in the background and observe, watch, wait.

The opposite has always been one of the most glaring aspects her brother always possesses, being the talkative one. He’s her saving grace, sliding in and interjecting a conversation that she’s been unwillingly pulled into—and he still makes jokes of it years later. They have a dynamic, a system worked out that runs perfectly, smoothly, and comfortably: Wanda’s the observer and Pietro’s the smooth talker; she scopes out the target and he goes in for the kill while she keeps eyes out for any possible exits and escape routes.

It was good while it lasted.

It was good until the world bursted in wild, blinding red and choking, suffocating pain and her skin prickles, pinched, scorched by an unseen flame at the cause of another pulse which stops beating.

* * *

Wanda isn’t nice—she’s cordial and moderately friendly on a good day, but she isn’t _nice_ —because she’s also filled with bitterness and bile and she’s sharp, rough edges and she’s untrained, unaware of the dangers outside of those broadcasted on the small box television that used to sit on a wooden table in her family’s living room. She’s unexperienced; she’s vile and she’s lonely.

And she has the power of a grenade in her fingertips, and of this, people are afraid of her. She doesn’t blame them.

* * *

Wanda doesn’t date—doesn’t try to, actually—and instead turns her attention to more “productive” things: things where she politely smiles cordially, allows her hands to dance and tick at the locks in hotel room safes, and for a day she doesn’t have to be herself and for once everything is easier, everything is _better_.

And then by false advertisement and from lies to stop an oncoming war, she’s taken and transformed into something _different_.

She paints her nails the color of obsidian stones and is isolated away from anything similar to commitment. She tries to get a hold on society, finally, for once. Red magic swirls against her palms, the stitches on her hands having healed long ago but the gnarly scars down to her elbows have yet to, and the emotional wounding will take even longer to heal.

Wanda holds the _awakened power_ of a bomb and effortless hypnosis at her will, and her twin’s the speed faster than a fired bullet. And they strike a deal with a talking robot to use their powers in exchange for a chance to avenge the deaths of their adopted family via a Stark bomb dud. The robot also proposes to help finding the identity of their birth parents, one who has the ability to manipulate magnetism .

* * *

Wanda doesn’t date. Well, not really.

In fact, her first “date” had been when she was fourteen and still normal—at the cause of accidentally stealing a similar looking mobile phone, at the expense of her heated and blushing face and not knowing how to respond to the assertiveness of the boy proposing a night outing in “payment.” Wanda hadn’t gone, faking a stomach flu when he came to “collect” her.

And her first date _after_ the _awakening_ of her powers—

It wasn’t a _date_ , per se. It was more supervising featuring an arm wrestle, sarcastic quips, and bitter instant coffee in a cheap motel room before a stakeout. But then again, Wanda always takes what she can get.

Wanda’s first date when getting her powers wasn’t a date, it was told—the title was insisted with the accompanying men’s eye rolls. And she believes it to be true too, until the buxom flaming-redhead in a in a white Under Armour shirt and worn jeans whispers in Wanda’s ear in passing: “they’re just intimidated by strong women. It makes their dicks feel small.”

Wanda has become used to taking the most of what she can get, but recently she’s been wanting more. Recently, she’s had her eyes on  _something in particular_.

* * *

The buxom bombshell is silent, mysterious, and strawberry-red lipstick matching her hair which Wanda is 60% sure is just dye, and she’s smooth but scathing, like downing alcohol without a chaser.

During the complementary breakfast in the lobby of a motel, Wanda tells the bombshell she makes Wanda think of a cactus.

The other nods in acceptance. “In that case, you remind me of a corvid bird. The ones that hoard.” She points out how Wanda stopped wearing her stolen jacket before they even properly met, that Wanda is now wearing a loose-fitting shirt and running shorts purchased from a department store, and she’s rather certain she’s seen the blue and white star pattered socks inside Wanda’s slides originally in Steve’s dresser drawer.

Wanda’s head tilts. “My, Miss Romanov…That might be the _nicest thing_ you’ve ever said to me.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get too used with it happening. I’m still mad at you for mind controlling me and stealing my jacket. That was pure leather, you know. That stuff isn’t cheap.”

Wanda dares to grin and reminds again that the jacket was returned without scratches while the other woman takes a generous sip from the thin black coffee straw in the short styrofoam cup—it’s orange juice she’s drinking. 

She sighs. “This is amazing,” is spoken as a low whisper directed to no one.

“You’ve never had orange juice?”

Natasha shakes her head. “Not in… _years_ , I think.”

And expectedly, Wanda asks for more details.

“That’s just what comes with the job’s obligations,” is the shrugged answer. “Somethings become a luxury when you’re constantly on the run.”

Wanda nods, understanding.

Against the mid-morning sun, Natasha’s up-pinned hair ignites. 

With her fork, Wanda pushes a decently-cooked sausage into  a small puddle of syrup on her plate and tries not to watch Natasha silently and quickly sip the rest of her juice—a fist curls beneath her chin and Wanda focuses on the imported elephant ear plants outside the large glass windows of the motel lobby.

“Now,” Natasha starts, leaning back in her seat. “What about you? Tell about the things you’re into. What do you use your… _fancy finger magic_ for when not fighting psychotic bad guys?”

“So it’s twenty questions we’re playing now?”

Wanda’s smile only shows and reflects when Natasha replies with her own. “Sure, if you want it to be.” Folds her arms and leans forward across the table in the corner of the lobby.

* * *

Wanda is introverted, no more a peoples person than a skittish cat. And yet nearly nine months after the events of Ultron, she’s bitting her fingernails though promising she never would again. She’s continuously glancing at the clock when she has appointments, and tugs downward at the hem of her t-shirts, pulls at the collar and straps of her pushup bras—Steve teases that she must have a date is why she’s anxious. Wanda denies it until he pats her shoulder and calls her “kid,” tacked on all his sentences.

He calls everyone “kid,” she’s noticed; “kid” or “son” or some other elder term despite her pointing out “I’m not that much younger than you, you know.” To which he grins similarly in the fashion Wanda remembers her father doing, and Steve laughs.

Steve “Captain Fossil” Rogers pokes goodnatured fun at Wanda’s clear nervousness that’s akin to what he’s familiar as to first date jitters (but it is also general anxiety from being recruited to the Avengers) until Natasha ends it by intervening: “yeah she has a date. With me. What of it, Boy Scout?”

Wanda’s head snaps up. Her eyes widen.

Steve sputters, having never see the pairing coming.

* * *

It’s fourteen months after Ultron’s rampage and Wanda is twenty-five and she’s becoming more of a people’s person.

The nightmares have subsided and the throbbing of an aching, gaping hole in her being is not as strong as it used to be—and it’s something she’s going to have to get used to forever being there, she knows. And likewise, she knows that she never completely will be used to it.

Wanda is more of a people’s person because she’s been forced to be. There’s mandatory strength training in the afternoon and endurance testing four hours after lunch. Sometimes she’s tempted to escape the Avengers compound by using the same hazing mental-veil while imprisoned by Hydra—sometimes she feels like she’s back being a human test subject with her routined medical visits, the probing and testing of her vitals. But then Sam Wilson slides in across her seat at the empty table and tells a story about his pet bird named Marty McFly.

Sam can’t be much older than an uncle of Wanda’s—fifteen years her senior, or so—and she knows that she isn’t supposed to feel lax, supposed to tamper with the impenetrable walls of security and comfort she’s perfected over the years, but she can’t help but feel the cracks in them forming, feels them soften and the walls lowering with every joke Sam makes at lunch and joking jab he makes towards Steve during training.

* * *

Natasha finally gets her revenge three weeks later at the Avengers compound during combat training: both women had been put opposite each other, the redhead with a long baton and Wanda with a pair of boxing gloves she can’t maneuver quite well just yet. During combat, Natasha caught the other behind the knee. Wanda’s able to roll out of the way of Natasha’s knee to the patted floor, but her position allows the redhead to swing a leg around and wraps around Wanda’s throat. She feels the back of Natasha’s knee to her throat and the air whooshes out her windpipes and then she’s frantically beating her palm in surrender against the patted mat.

Wanda wheezes and gasps, emitting high pitched noises of distress as Natasha’s thighs squeeze around her ears—and this isn’t how she hoped to be _this_ close to the older woman in _this_ way—and Natasha isn’t giving her grasp. She thinks Natasha’s grip even _tightens_ —until a command bounces off the soundproof walls of the training room and suddenly Wanda can breath again. She coughs, wheezes and gasps, crawling across the black mats for distance befogging roll over on her back.

Steve had entered from the doorway and called his friend off.

As if nothing particular had happened, Natasha twirls the baton in wide circles.

Wanda holds her chest and coughs some more. Feels across her neck and wonders if she’s going to have bruised come tomorrow.

Both women do not interact for months, but it isn’t intentional. Natasha disappears for a reason unknown to Wanda, but she suspects it’s either “hero/spy” business or having to do with her shift of searching for the hulking Avenger. When it’s mentioned to Sam during training break, he answers that all on the team have been searching but there hasn’t been even the faintest of crumbs to follow.

* * *

In that following summer, Wanda becomes a peoples person.

More precisely, she begins spy training under Natasha and is thrown into the world of social interaction. It isn’t as uncomfortable as it’s daunting. Following orders out in the field only go so far until she’s always in the space with your mentor—and that’s when she _really_  starts enjoying it all.

Often, she redirects her personal schedule in order to have time to spend with Natasha—sometimes it’s talking, other times lunch along with goodnatured teasing and a finger’s bop on the nose about Wanda’s naivety about her new job. Most times it’s because Wanda’s learned the schedule of when the other is in the gym, has memorizes the nimble attacks and smooth punches the other woman makes to patted dummies, has meticulously categorizes in memory the cling of her shirts and spandex shorts made damp by sweat, and how her red hair sticks to her forehead and the nape of her neck. Of the increase in Wanda’s own pulse when she fantasizes about running her fingers down the length of that same neck, and a tease and tickle of her breath blowing, followed by her lips…

But that’s also where most of Wanda’s troubles come in—because there’s Vision, and Wanda is now mentoring under Natasha but it isn’t the position she wishes to have, because it puts her aspirations all at risk and vulnerable to be scrutinized through her having an abnormal perspective.

And there’s Steve, doing the best he can to make Wanda feel welcome and comfortable with her new life and is there to remind her to not turn on the news. And there’s also Vision, who’s more of a convenience than it is satisfying.

Once, a janitor at the compound suggested she and Vision would make a cute couple. Wanda took it with gritted teeth and a practiced, forced smile and a thanks that hurt more than it should to say, knowing that she couldn’t say otherwise—she couldn’t say that she’s had her sights on someone else.

And it hurts because nearly every day she smells peach-scented lotion, catches scrapped knuckles and sees the swaying of alluring curves and Wanda can’t hold or touch them; every day Wanda sees blazing fire hair and glossed pink lips and can only bite her own.

Once while people-watching, Wanda asks her mentor advise: “Can I ask you a question? What if…this is advice—for a _friend_ —this _friend_  likes _this person_ but isn’t sure their feelings were being reciprocated?”

“Well you solve that by telling them, of course,” Natasha answers simply, sight still trained ahead.

“But there’s another person who might like my friend more. _Honestly_ like them. A lot. But my friend doesn’t think they like the second person back even though he’s really nice, and compliant. …But the friend has liked the first person much longer.”

“Well wouldn’t it make sense to have made a move?”

“People get nervous, Natasha. And not everything is as easy as you think it is. I didn’t say anything when you _burned scrambled eggs_ , now did I?” She pushes the other by the shoulder in good play.

“Fine. Fair enough,” Natasha rolls her eyes. “Now what’s the deal with this _friend_  of yours?”

Wanda thinks about her words but makes sure to not take too long for it to become suspicious. “The person my friend likes is really cool, and fierce, and strong.” Wanda gives a laugh. “They’re _something great_. But also…my friend’s  _unsure_  about…whether the first person would no longer be interested if there is a few years of age difference.”

At this, Natasha shrugs. “As long as it’s no more than three or four years, then _I_  say it’s fine.”

Wanda quiets.

She and Natasha have a nine year difference.

* * *

Wanda is used to accepting what she can get from the many years of living on her own in Sokovia. But no longer does she have her other half to spend time with, so she’s working at digging herself out of the mental rut she’s fallen into. It’s mostly worked out in her favor—she’s smiling and she’s _happy_ , she is, and she’s moved on.

It’s only partially worked out, because there is a hybrid—an android—guy she knows who is more meek and dutiful than he’s independent and dominant.

It’s nearly two years after Ultron and Wanda has celebrated her first Hanukkah without her twin by her side, and celebrates her first American Christmas in a room with five agents and a Charlie Brown special playing on tv.

Wanda is chronically antisocial. She doesn’t date, doesn’t put herself out there because she’s afraid—she’s afraid of rejection, she’s afraid of affection being temporary, and the hostility often received because of her powers.

Not as often anymore, Wanda awakes with tears streaming from dreams where her family is still alive. She walks the compound still remembering them all like it was a week ago.

Wanda is devoted, dedicated, and she’s revengeful, regretful.

It’s less than two years after Ultron and she’s shuffled to live in the property of the man whose creations are responsible for her adopted parents’ deaths.

She never found the man who’s supposedly her biological father. Currently, she isn’t positive she wants to.

Her friends within the Avengers team have all but lost hope of finding the hulking member, and on on late over too-bitter coffee, Wanda joins her mentor on a long leather sofa, bringing a throw blanket and breaking the older woman from her thoughts. As the analog clock above an imitation fireplace ticks to two a.m., both women shares nostalgic laughter and stories about lost loved ones, about almost-haves, and could-have-beens.

By three a.m. dried tears crust the corners of their eyes and the cups are half empty, and Natasha is nodding off on Wanda’s shoulder. A mumbled “you’re not too bad yourself, Red,” slips from her lips as she drifts off.

Wanda tries very hard to not respond, in fear of waking her up. She also tries—and fails—at not responding in another way.

Wanda isn’t nice, but neither is the redheaded bombshell, and she smiles at the fact.

At the end of that night, she leaves a light flitter of a kiss on the spy’s forehead.

**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me what you think :)


End file.
